Entries tagged with “Good Eats”.

The final day of the West Highland Way combined the hill climbing of the Devil’s Staircase with the mileage of Loch Lomond and the rainy weather and wet trail that had become commonplace in the Highlands. In other words, it was 15 miles up and down a hill in lots of rain. Oh, and with some gorgeous views. Don’t forget about those.

We got an extra early start for our longest hiking day, which clocked in at 18.5 miles with more than 2,500 feet of elevation gain.

The morning started out as a pleasant and easy stroll along an old military road from the 1800s. We hugged the edge of a long, narrow valley, hopscotching with the train tracks for the West Highland Railway.

Halfway day! The middle of our week of hiking and the day we passed the halfway point of the West Highland Way.

The trail was still fairly rocky and hilly, but easier going than around the lake. After a stretch through a wooded area, we came out onto open grazing lands with lots of sheep and cows. We got awfully close to some cows that were hanging out on the sides of the trail — including a baby cow nursing its mother. We were careful to move slowly and be very non-threatening as we walked around the nursing cow.

A couple weeks ago we spent 7 days walking the West Highland Way in Scotland. At 8-18 miles each day, the West Highland Way takes you 96 miles from just north of Glasgow to Fort William in the Scottish Highlands.

The West Highland Way starts in the town of Milngavie (pronounced Mill-guy), just north of Glasgow. We took the train up and had fun on the way trying to spot who else might be embarking on the same hike. At the Milngavie train station, we handed off our luggage to the baggage carriers who would be transporting it for us, and then with just our daypacks, we struck off to find the start of the trail.

Last weekend a little bit of summer snuck its way into February here in San Francisco. To take best advantage of the sun and the three-day weekend, we set a theme for ourselves: a long walk to a different neighborhood each day where we would get ice cream at one of the city’s many fancy ice cream shops.

We kicked things off on Saturday with a walk down to Dogpatch, a neighborhood just a bit south of the baseball stadium and very much in transition over the last few years. Dogpatch has been one of our favorite areas for longer weekend runs as it’s usually quiet on weekend mornings, plus there are nice views and breezes along the Bay and there are a bunch of cute restaurants and food shops. (more…)

From TheCityGirlsGoHiking attic of posts that never quite made it out into the world; on this bright, sunny spring day, we bring you a lovely rumination on the joys and perils of picking apples in the rain.

Oh, the best-laid plans. The best-laid plans that go awry when the sky opens up and starts dumping ridiculous amounts of rain all along the coast. The best-laid plans for a wander down the coast to a tiny little apple orchard with an outsize number of varietals in neat little rows.

What do you do when the forecast calls for rain on the day you’d set aside for apple picking? Why, you go anyway.

On a visit to the midwest, AM spent a food- and fun-filled day at the Great Minnesota Get-Together, aka the Minnesota State Fair.

Now, depending on who you ask, the fair holds different highlights for different people. But everyone can agree that one of the main reasons to go is the fair food. This is, after all, the (perhaps contested) birthplace of everything fried on a stick that you’ve ever imagined, plus a whole slew of things you never imagined could be battered, cooked up in hot oil, and eaten on a stick.

Chocoholics that we are, we were super excited to learn about a chocolate farm tour on Kaua’i. Hawai’i is the only state in the US where cacao is grown, and very few growers of cacao process it into chocolate.

One place that does the whole cycle from bean to bar is Garden Island Chocolate, a sustainably-run fruit farm and small-batch, artisinal chocolate producer.

Before our farm tour, we fortified ourselves with macadamia pancakes with coconut syrup at a place that celebrated one of the island’s most notorious denizens: the chicken.